


If I Never Tell You

by LesbianArsenal



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Canon-Typical Violence, Demons, F/F, Gun Violence, Magic, light sexual material
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-15 21:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18507613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LesbianArsenal/pseuds/LesbianArsenal
Summary: Kate Kane isn't used to being flustered, but she finds herself exactly that every time she's in the presence of a certain Amazonian Princess. Who wouldn't be, she justifies. But when a demonic threat enters Gotham, she starts seeing more of Wonder Woman, and much more of the woman behind that title.





	1. The Demon

**Author's Note:**

> So originally, I was going to make this one long fic, but I needed to get it out here as motivation to finish the last third, so 6 weekly chapters it is! Hope you stick around. This is very much a set-up chapter, and more of the secondary characters will show up in the following chapters.  
> Sort of set at the end of Tynion's TEC run, very roughly. What even is canon, no one cares.

Bruce had called for Kate as backup on a mission with Diana. She’d been surprised by the call since Bruce didn’t usually like to involve her in League business. Bruce tried to keep the lines between Gotham and the Justice League strict.

He had seemed hurried, which was an unusual tone from the Dark Knight. He gave her coordinates and hung up. She was used to the brief orders, but something about it had unsettled Kate. She looked at the coordinates and realized that they were right outside Gotham. Unusual for League business to take them so close to the Bats’ city.

When she had arrived, she was greeted by Bruce and Diana in the middle of a fight. The warehouse from the outside had looked normal enough, but inside it was lit up with an eerie, magical glow and fists were flying. So were the people who those fists were connecting with. She had stopped to stare in awe as Diana had punched a man clear across the building they were in.

She quickly realized why she had been the one called in; both Bruce and Diana weren’t in costume. Bruce had only a running towel pulled over part of his face and a tracksuit on. Diana’s clothes were much the same, with her bracelets on and her hair pulled into a ponytail. Kate didn’t think she had ever seen Diana with her hair pulled back.

One of the men noticed her distraction and rushed her. Kate quickly grabbed onto and twisted one of the man’s arms. When she bent him backwards, she changed her mind; this wasn’t a man. A sharp hissing sound escaped his, possibly, throat? His entire face was gone, replaced by a swirling void of things Kate couldn’t begin to try to put a name to.

“It’s just you two?” Kate asked, grunting as she slammed the body onto the concrete.

“Got caught off duty,” Diana answered. Her fist connected with one of her assailants and the body dropped to the floor. Kate noticed an energy snake over to the body as it got back up.

“What are we dealing with? Anything you can tell me would be great,” Kate knocked her elbow into the body behind her and threw a batarang into the face-void of the one in front of her. She watched in horror as the batarang was pushed out and clattered onto the floor. She saw the same energy snake around the form as it started moving again.

“Not entirely sure,” Diana said, “We know it involves magic.”

“Are you sure you’re not the detective?” Kate smirked as she threw a body towards Diana to pummel across the room.

Diana took a moment to smile back and their eyes met for briefly before Kate noticed a body behind her. She threw herself around with a kick and the force knocked it down. With her boot pressed into the body, she scanned the room for where that energy was coming from.

“It has to be coming from somewhere,” Kate mumbled to herself.

She scanned the room as Bruce moved closer to her. Between him and Diana, Kate was sure she would be able to find the source of the magic without getting blindsided.

Her eyes trailed along the lines on the floor. Whatever magic this was, she hadn’t seen it before. She only recognized about half the runes on the ground. She darted her eyes from the words to the bits of energy snaking across it. She tried to follow them, but there seemed to be no clear pattern.

“I don’t think whatever is controlling these things is on this level,” She called out, joining Bruce in throwing down a few bodies.

“We can keep holding them off,” Bruce said, his voice still even despite the sweat trickling down his brow. Kate wondered how long they had been fighting off these creatures without rest before she got here. “You go find the source.”

Kate found herself looking at Diana for confirmation. Diana met her eyes and smirked.

“We’ll be fine, go,” She said, her voice sounding softer than Kate thought it should during a battle. She tore her eyes from Diana and ducked into a door marked ‘stairs’.

The stairwell was mostly dark, lit only by the small bits of magic glow that permeated the doorways. Kate took several stairs at a time but stopped when she heard voices coming from behind the basement door. She put her ear against the door.

“Please, don’t hurt them!”

“You do not command me any longer, human.”

Great, otherworldly beings with superiority complexes. Just what Kate needed right now.

“I didn’t know you were going to be…”

“Janey, make him stop!”

“I can’t!”

There was a loud bang and Kate decided in that moment to stop listening and act. She shoved open the door and took a quick account of what was happening.

In front of her there was a large, demon-like entity just to the side of what looked like a summoning circle with a girl in the center of it. He had a bullet hole in his shoulder, but it didn’t seem to be stopping him in anyway. He was raising his hands towards a person holding a gun shakily in front of them, and a few other people were frozen in fear behind them.  

Kate saw the demon’s attack and lunged towards the person with the gun. The magic hit the ground where they had been, and Kate was now holding the gun. She clicked the safety on and slid it away from the fight.

“Holy shit, you shot the demon, Ghan?” The girl in the center of the circle was clutching her shoulder. “Why would you shoot the demon?”

“You weren’t doing anything Janey!” The person in Kate’s grip wriggled out of it and pointed an accusatory finger at the girl. Kate noticed the demon gearing up for another attack and pushed Ghan towards the others as she jumped out of the way of the blast. She needed to get these civilians out of here, that was priority number one.

“Hey, demon, your fight is with me now,” Kate growled.

The demon smirked and looked Kate up and down, “You have no business here.”

Kate frowned and readied a few smoke bombs on her belt, “Oh, I disagree.” She let the smoke bombs fly towards the demon and rushed over to the people crowding together. She motioned for them to climb the stairs.

“I’ve got four coming up who’re going to need cover to get to safety,” Kate whispered into her comm.

“Affirmative,” Bruce replied.

Kate didn’t have time to be annoyed with the subtle jab at her military career and threw a cable around the demon as the smoke cleared and the door to the stairwell closed. The demon laughed as its energy snaked around the cord and dissolved it.

“Neat trick,” Kate said as she tossed a few batarangs at the demon. She sidestepped so that she was on top of a few runes and scuffed the floor. She threw a few more and slid across the floor to wipe at a few of the runes with her gloved hands.

“You think you’re clever, but I see you,” The demon bellowed.

Janey had broken into sobs and was still holding her shoulder. Kate saw blood on her hands and realized that the girl was linked with the demon somehow. She looked back at the demon just as he shot a blast at her.

“You are no match for me, for I am-”

“Save it. I don’t care who you are, I just know you’re going back where you belong,” Kate said as she sprayed adhesive at the demon’s mouth.

The door to the basement slammed open and Diana stood in the doorway.

“Did you get the kids to safety?”

“Yes, the creatures upstairs seemed to give us a respite,” Diana answered.

So, he wasn’t all powerful then, if the distraction of the fight down here was enough to alleviate the fight upstairs.

“Good,” Kate nodded at Janey, “She seems to be linked to the demon somehow. When her friend shot it, she got hurt.”

“We have to get them to switch places.” Diana dodged a blast.

The demon laughed as its energy swirled around it. “I have wasted enough time with you mortals.”

Diana rose an eyebrow and threw both hands to her sides. She looked at Kate for a moment before nodding at the girl. She turned her attention back to the demon.

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

Kate didn’t even think as she leapt for the girl as Diana brought her wrists together. The demon’s blast impacted the bracelets just as Diana slammed her wrists together.

Kate dove for the girl and then kicked off the ground just as the demon’s foot entered back into the circle from the blast. Diana gave the demon a kick and he fell the rest of the way into the circle.

“The…the words what are the words,” Janey sobbed. The girl was shaking in Kate’s arms. She gave Janey a gentle pat on the shoulder.

“You can do it, remember how to make him leave.”

Janey nodded through her tears and pulled out her phone. The screen was cracked, but Kate could see a few incantations on a pulled-up webpage. Technology was a blessing and a curse sometimes. Janey recited the words from the screen and the demon growled in rage.

“You’ve made a mistake, human! I’ll be back! I know how to get-” The demon disappeared in a brilliant light and when it dissipated, the ground was clear of any marks.

Diana slumped her shoulders and let out a breath. Kate turned to the girl.

“You summoned a demon from the internet?”

“It was just supposed to be a small one,” Janey mumbled.

Kate tried not to let her exasperation show as she tried to find words. Diana had stepped over to them and crossed her arms.

“So, you meant to summon it?”

Janey sniffled and wiped at the snot running down her face. Kate took the opportunity to inspect the wound on her shoulder, but it seemed to be gone. Only the blood remained. She really hated dealing with magic.

“It was supposed to help us!”

Diana frowned and crossed her arms.

Janey looked at the ground. “It was supposed to help us.”

“The kids are okay, if a little shaken up,” Bruce’s voice crackled into Kate’s ear, “I set them up with a counselor.”

“Good thinking. It’s all clear now,” Kate said.

“What was so bad that you thought you had to summon a demon?” Diana was crouched down next to Janey now. Kate could see a few worry lines on her features, but they didn’t detract from her beauty. In fact, if Kate was honest with herself, seeing the compassion so blatantly written on Diana’s face only made her that much more beautiful.

“These guys at school…” Janey sniffled, “They keep harassing us and we just wanted to scare them a little, you know? Scare them like they scare us.”

Diana placed her arm around Janey’s shoulders and hugged her close. “You couldn’t go to a teacher?”

“Nobody would care,” Janey said, “Nobody ever really cares.”

Diana hugged the girl a little closer to her and rubbed her arm. “Well, I care. Tell me about it.”

Janey sniffled and nodded. Kate watched in fascination as Janey explained what the boys had been doing. She realized why they hadn’t felt like they could go to anyone; the boys had been sneaky. They never made a scene, only instilled fear.

“Where did your friend get their gun?” Kate asked after Janey was done explaining.

“I don’t know, I didn’t even know they brought one!” Janey cried. She put a hand on her own shoulder and gasped when she met un-marred skin.

“You’re going to be okay,” Diana said. “We’ll see to your bullies.”

“You’re gonna beat them up?” Janey asked, hope in her voice so genuine that Kate had to bite down a smile.

Diana frowned. “We will not meet violence with violence if there’s another option.”

Janey looked a bit deflated at the words. Kate made eye contact with Diana and excused herself. She thought she could feel Diana’s eyes on her as she left, but that wasn’t her concern. Diana would keep talking the girl down, but Kate wanted to know what the plan was from here.

She emerged from the warehouse and found Bruce chatting with the kids. She could see a van in the distance, heading for them, probably a transport to the trauma clinic. She was almost shocked by the lack of police. These kids had summoned a demon and most likely stolen a gun. This was Bruce though, and Bruce was always soft on kids, especially kids who had been through abusive and traumatic situations.

She watched silently from the doorway as the kids climbed into the van, being checked over for injury and answering questions. She felt a hand ghost over her shoulder as Diana came out with Janey. Diana placed her hands on Janey’s shoulders.

“It’ll be okay. I promise you.” Diana’s voice was soft, but her expression stern. Janey nodded and gave a glance at Kate before walking over to the van.

Kate watched as Janey’s now non-existent wound was looked at. She was given a blanket and climbed into the van. One of her friends was crying into the shoulder of a social worker.

As the van doors closed, Bruce walked over to Kate and Diana.

“So, what did you tell them?” Kate asked, giving a quick look at Bruce’s casual clothes.

“What? Bruce Wayne can’t be concerned for kids?” Diana laughed.

Bruce’s scowl gave a slight upturn. “They’re kids. I’m sure they will think whatever they want to anyway. It won’t be more ridiculous than any of the other rumors about me.”

“I can see the headline now,” Kate grinned and spread her fingers out in front of her, “Cryptid Bruce Wayne spotted saving kids from demon. Where was his boyfriend, Batman?”

Diana clutched her stomach and let out a loud laugh. Bruce let out a breath that Kate knew was a chuckle.

“That’s my favorite rumor,” Diana said. She placed a hand on Bruce’s cheek and gave him a sad face. “When _will_ you introduce us?”

Bruce rolled his eyes and gently pushed her hand away. Kate smirked, but when she crossed her arms, she suddenly felt over dressed in her cape and cowl.

“Why call me, not Duke?” Kate asked. “Surely he’s active right now.”

“Tried him first, but he was tied up with his own situation.”

“Gotham really is getting unrulier during the day, huh?” Kate looked over to the skyline of the city. It had changed so much in such a short time.

“I’m surprised you were up,” Diana said.

Kate shrugged. She had still been up from patrol the night before. She found it difficult to sleep some days after a slower night. Not that she should really complain about a slow night in Gotham.

“I better change, though. People are already upset enough about one bat during the day.”

“You’re probably tired,” Diana said.

“Nothing like a demon fight to wake you up again.”

Bruce looked between them and yawned. Kate rose an eyebrow, and not just because Bruce rarely showed any sign that he was actually human. It was a very clearly fake yawn. Based on Diana’s look of amusement, she had figured it out too.

“I should go, wouldn’t want to not be in condition for patrol tonight.”

“Yeah, that would be awful,” Kate said, wryly. This had never seemed to be a concern for Bruce before. She wondered what was making him act so unusual.

Kate watched as he gave a stilted nod and jogged away. Kate thought about walking over to where her ride was but was stopped by the reminder that Diana had stayed where she was. She locked eyes with Diana before feeling the need to look at the ground.

Something about Diana made Kate forget everything she knew about talking to women.

“Hey, this was nice,” Diana said. She placed a hand on Kate’s shoulder and squeezed it gently. Kate felt that squeeze around her heart as well. “We should meet up some time again. Maybe leave the cowl at home, though.”

Kate’s entire body seemed to freeze up as Diana gave her a soft smirk. Kate had to call upon all her training not to melt as soon as Diana turned to jog away.

 

-

 

The next few days were hectic. There seemed to be a new villainous plot every night. Penguin, Riddler, Mr. Freeze…she wondered what had them all running on the same schedule. She was tired.

Bruce had brought up Diana on a few occasions, though, which was…unusual. He never said anything during patrol, always keeping the cowl on both physically and mentally. Morning dinner at the manor was another story entirely.

A dropped line about something Diana liked here, a short story about something Diana had done there. She knew Diana and Bruce were close, but she had always assumed their relationship stayed platonic. What if it wasn’t though? Bruce usually kept his romantic relationships ‘low key’ around the family, but perhaps this was different. Diana wasn’t a morally grey villain, maybe he felt he didn’t have to? The awkwardness after the demon fight could have been explained by Bruce not wanting to admit the relationship.

She had thought Diana was flirting, but maybe she had read too far into things. She knew Diana tended to be a bit more physical in her interactions with people. A hand on a leg, a hug, a head on a shoulder. She had seen Diana interact with enough people to know these things were normal.

She hadn’t realized how far into her own thoughts she had been drawn until Luke waved a hand in front of her face. She blinked a few times and swatted the hand away.

“You still awake in there?” Luke asked, “Thought we lost you.”

“I’m fine,” Kate said, though she could hear in her own tone how unconvincing that had been. She cleared her throat. “Just thinking about the cases.”

Luke rose an eyebrow.

“It’s the truth.”

“Sure it is.”

Kate sighed and looked over at Bruce who seemed to be deep in conversation with Barbara about something. Who attended Dinner was usually based on who was closest at the time, and Barbara didn’t stop by that often. She was sure they were comparing notes, or maybe, more hopefully, just catching up. Maybe…speaking about Diana?

“Okay, what is up with you lately?” Luke scooted a bit closer to Kate.

Kate sighed and rested her head against the high back of the chair.

“I’m just overthinking things, it’s nothing. I just need some extra sleep, these last few days have been a lot.”

“Alright, if you say so.” Luke went back to his omelet.

Kate looked at her own plate and sighed. She felt bad for leaving it mostly uneaten, but she really needed a walk to clear her mind. Hopefully, Alfred didn’t take it too personally as she grabbed the plate and walked it to the kitchen to scrape it into some Tupperware.

“I can do that for you, Miss Kane,” Alfred said from the doorway of the kitchen.

Kate continued scraping the plate and smiled, “You do enough around here, Alfred. I am more than capable of bagging my own leftovers.”

“Don’t go spreading that type of thinking, I might have nothing to do all day.”

“You could retire, a nice beach with a great big umbrella.”

“Don’t put fantasies in my head, Miss Kane.”

Kate smirked and gave Alfred a kiss on her way out. Where she was headed was anyone’s guess. Home seemed logical, she needed rest. Needed a shower that wasn’t poured from bat-shaped water spouts. Her cousin was very dedicated to his theme.

Home, however, hadn’t been the comfort it usually was. Julia was out on some mission, so her normally talkative roommate was absent. This left her, and the neighbor’s dog who seemed to bark from dawn to dusk. Once Julia was back in town, she really needed to talk to her about her choice of ‘adorable townhouse’.

Kate drove for a while, trying to shake the interaction with Luke off. He was just bored, restless. Retirement didn’t look good on him, but Kate didn’t know how to convince him of that. He had known something was off though, and that worried Kate.

Was she really letting this silly crush on Wonder Woman impede her work? Batwoman was her dream, her passion, she shouldn’t be worrying about….

“Diana?”

Sure enough, there was Diana, laughing on a Gotham street with another woman. Why was Diana still in Gotham? Or in Gotham again? There was a small, petty voice that told her to tell Alfred that Diana hadn’t come to Dinner, but she hushed it. If Diana wanted to hang out with equally beautiful women instead of…her…well, instead of Bruce, that wasn’t any of Kate’s concern.

She sped past and found the motivation to get home. Locking the door behind her, she threw herself on her bed after shucking her pants off hastily at the door.

She said a brief tefillah; she had long since stopped worrying about whether or not it was technically still Sacharit or not if it was technically her morning. Surely someone was nocturnal when the laws were written.

She laid there, staring at the ceiling and wrestling with the same questions she always wrestled with before bed. Guilt, Loneliness, Regret, Horniness. She pushed the last one up on the list of things to deal with and fell asleep with a hand under her boxers.


	2. The Almost Demon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the shortest chapter, but things will be gearing up! Hope you enjoy!

“You know, I wasn’t expecting an army.” Kate knocked another meta out, trying to be gentle. These were just kids, teens, no older than the one standing at her back.

“Well I wasn’t either, to be clear,” Duke grunted as he threw his winged escrima to knock a different meta off balance.

Duke had called her just as she was waking up, not even enough time to finish her coffee. He had been hurried, said he’d needed back up for a case and Bruce was still out cold. That hadn’t surprised Kate, she was pretty sure she hadn’t seen her cousin up before ten at night in the last week. Maybe he was staying up later and later because of the increase in criminal activity, but she couldn’t help her thoughts rolling towards a different, Diana-shaped reason.

“You said there was a leader?”

“I said I was tracking a guy who seemed to be a leader,” Duke corrected as he guided Kate out of the concussive blast that was headed for them, “I didn’t know he was building an army.”

Kate frowned, knowing Duke couldn’t see. She tried to hail someone on the coms, Cass, Babs, even Jason, but no one was picking up. She wondered if it had anything to do with what was happening around them.

She looked around, frantically trying to get eyes on the whole warehouse. Just a bunch of teens blasting them with powers. Metas in Gotham was still new to her, but she did try her best to roll with the punches.

“What else can you tell me about this leader? Is this the one you said was laundering money through the tutoring charity?”

“No, this is the other one. The one who was gathering metas through an online chat room.”

Kate suppressed a groan.

“Are you really that old?”

“I know what a chat room is, I’m thirty not dead.”

“Sure, sure.” Duke chuckled but was cut short and it turned into a grunt of pain.

Kate flipped around and saw that a meta had sliced through his armor somehow, maybe a psionic blade. Current company not-withstanding, Kate was getting really tired of metas in Gotham.  Exploding penguins? Fine. Riddles written across mailboxes? Great. Teen who could beat you up with their minds? No thank you.

Instinctively, she reached for a rope-batarang to hopefully put the girl who had cut Duke out of commission, but she pulled out a regular one instead. She threw it and it cut the girl’s hand, but instead of a scream, she didn’t seem phased.

Feeling immensely guilty about the mistake, Kate reached for the right one this time. Odd, she knew her belt like the back of her hand, better even. She didn’t give herself time to think about though as she had the girl tied up. The thunk her body made as it hit the ground didn’t seem to faze the girl either.

Odd.

“You noticing that these kids don’t seem to be worried about getting hurt?”

Duke seemed to be recovered mostly from his scrape, Kate’s distraction giving him enough time to apply a foaming bandage. By the silence, Kate knew Duke was running scenarios in his head, taking inventory of the fight so far.

“That is weird, I would write it off as adrenaline but….”

His words tapered off as he flipped over a boy wielding fire from his hands.

Kate took a look around the room as she restrained another teen. There wasn’t any urgency to the fight, she realized. The teens seemed lethargic almost. Like…wait.

“Tell me more about the chat room!”

Duke startled. “Um, it was a pretty standard chat room, from what I could tell. DND, that’s Dungeons and Drag-“

“I know what DND is!”

“Right, it was a chat room designed for talking about homebrews, you know when you make your own elements for the game. I found it on my off time actually, and didn’t realize anything was weird at first, but the Chat Master,” Duke chuckled, “You know, like Game Master?”

“I really appreciate you being thorough, but I’d like to not be fighting well into the night.”

“Right, anyway, the Chat Master seemed off, so I did a little research, back reading, checking for keywords, and I noticed a pattern that was weird. He would always share a new spell and then ask if anyone wanted to join his IRL game, held in the community center. It was weird, not totally creepy, but it was only after sharing a spell. Now, I like a good wizard or warlock as much as the next guy, but I’m much more into bards or monks, more dynamic gameplay.”

Kate grunted as she shoved two teens at each other and forced herself to keep paying attention to Duke’s ramblings. “Relevance?”

“Well it means I didn’t really look at the spells when they were posted. But then I did, because it was weird, and they were really really weird. Like all demonic in nature, and all using the same basic principles. I had never seen any one point them out being so similar, so I decided to go check out the IRL group and the social worker at the center said that the group had all gone out for pizza, but I only just missed them. SO…I called you and here we are.”

“You said demonic?”

“Yeah! They all had the same weird little lore detail too, with a god that must be homebrewed, Yekeq? I think that’s how it’s pronounced.”

“With an ‘l’ sound, Signal.” Kate suppressed a shudder. That is a Hebrew word, maybe this ‘Chat Master’ was just Jewish? Looking around at the scene before her, she doubted it.

“Have you heard of him?”

“Not the demon, but the word is familiar. It means locust, or a young one. Would explain the teen situation.”

“Do you think it has anything to do with that demon you helped Batman take down?”

“The thought crossed my mind. Look for any energy leaking about, maybe the leader is still summoning.”

If there was something Kate hated more than fighting metas, it was fighting demons, but HaShem sure does enjoy testing his people.

Duke grew quiet for a while and just the sounds of both of them grunting with exertion filled the warehouse, along with the noise of the metas powers. They had nearly all of them subdued. Kate nodded towards Duke and took over fighting solo.

“Use your, light power…thing. Look for an absence of it or however it works.”

“I’ve explained how it works multiple times, are you sure you’re only thirty?”

“Less jokes more looking!” Kate despised banter sometimes.

Suddenly, Duke was pointing towards the catwalk. “There! There!”

Kate looked over as she knocked out the last meta teen. Past the cat walk a ways was a small door, probably to an office. Duke was already on his way before she had even spotted it. She swore this kid was more impulsive than even Bruce or Dick.

She tried one more call on the coms as she followed him up.

_Diana, please answer._

The call didn’t pick up. Kate sighed, knowing it has been a long shot. She was sure Diana kept fairly normal hours, and was probably tired from fighting…Ares or whatever it was she did when she wasn’t either with the League or eating breakfast at the mansion.

Duke was already inside the door by the time she made it up after him, and she frowned when she saw what was inside.

Computers were placed around the room, wires making what she could recognize as a summoning circle. Kate was already tired and she hadn’t even been on patrol yet.

From the looks of it, and the sounds of clacking keyboards, the demon or whatever it was hadn’t been summoned yet.

“Looks like your connection is too slow there, man.” Duke kicked a computer clear across the room and the man typing away at the keyboard jolted up. His face was morphed from passive to furious in the blink of an eye, his mouth snarling and Kate was half expecting him to start foaming at the mouth any moment.

“You know not what you have done!”

The man lunged at Duke, but Kate grabbed his ankle as it moved off the floor, slamming his face into the hard floor. She couldn’t bring herself to feel bad at the sound of his nose breaking. Duke grabbed a canister from his belt and sprayed. The man stopped struggling to get up.

“MY FUCKING HAND!”

Kate looked down to the warehouse floor through the door. The teens seemed to be coming to.

“I’ll handle the kids, you make sure he doesn’t bleed out of his face.”

“Can you really be calling them kids? Didn’t Alfred pack you a juice box today?”

“It’s a Capri Sun and they are the bomb, I will hear no more slander.”

Kate snorted as Duke jumped off the catwalk. She turned to the man in front of her, splayed on the ground in a very undignified manner. Being cautious, she looked at the screen in the center of the circle and took a quick picture, maybe Luke would be able to tell them what the code meant. She messed up the wires and proceeded to tie the man up, finishing it with a bow that she knew would make Gordon smirk.

 

-

 

“Lucas Fox, I know you’re home!”

Kate banged on the door a few more times. Next to her, Duke looked ready to pass out from exhaustion, his back pack slung over one shoulder and the other leaned against the door frame.

Her voice lowered a few decibels. “I told you that you could stay home.”

“Yeah, but Luke might know more about the code and that’s MY case.”

“Your case I had to save your ass on.”

“But my case non-the-less!”

The door opened in front of them and a ragged man answered. Kate rose an eyebrow as she took in Luke’s current state. Stained tank top, gym shorts that looked like Jean Paul’s and an unkept scruff that told Kate he hadn’t left the loft probably since she saw him last week at dinner.

“You know what time it is? On a Saturday?”

“I already went to temple, Luke, it’s time to face the afternoon.”

He groaned and pushed the door open more. The place was tidy, like it always was, perhaps a bit more so in Jean Paul’s absence. The man was pious, but forgetful when it came to cleaning up after himself.

Duke fished his phone out of his pocket and hoisted it into Luke’s face. Luke frowned and snatched the device out of the kid’s hand.

“What the hell is this?”

“The code, remember, from the weird chatroom demon man?”

“Right, right…of course…chatroom demon man…” Luke shuffled over to his computer and flicked the screen of Duke’s phone, and somehow the picture was now on Luke’s oversized monitor. He tossed the phone back to Duke, who scrambled to make sure it didn’t fall on the floor.

“I’ll be doing my AP physics homework while you look at it, let me know if you figure anything out.” Duke set Luke’s coffee table up as his study area and Kate wandered over to Luke’s chair.

She leaned against the back of it, purposefully breathing loudly next to Luke’s ear.

“Can I help you, Kane?”

“Why did you rearrange my belt?”

Kate knew Luke was bored, since when he had ‘retired’ he had assumed he’d be spending most of his down time with Jean Paul. When the man left for space saying angels told him to go, Luke had understood as much as he could. She supposed it came with the territory of dating Jean Paul Valley.

“Well, it was impractical the way you had it set up, and anyway, you’re welcome for it being .4 ounces lighter.”

“It’s set up the way it is for a reason. It’s practical for me.”

“Which is impractical for anyone else.”

“Well, I’m me, so I don’t see why that matters.” She crossed her arms. She missed Jean Paul more immediately. He usually took her side in the teasing. 

“You’re particularly annoying today you know, what has you in a funk?”

Kate thought about mentioning Diana, wondering if Luke had heard anything about Bruce dating her, but she dismissed the notion.

“Nothing is wrong, just overworked.”

Luke looked at her, considering her. He sighed. “Look, I thought maybe sprucing up your uniform would cheer you up.”

“It doesn’t need sprucing.”

“I’ve seen your apartment Kate, you wouldn’t know what needed sprucing if it bit you.”

“What’s wrong with my apartment?”

Duke laughed from the couch. Kate sent him a warning look and he went back to his textbook.

“Just saying, it’s not exactly goddess-enticing.”

Kate was taken aback. Did Luke somehow know something? She knew better than anyone that keeping a secret around a bunch of detectives was nearly impossible. Perhaps he was just teasing her, after her tirade a few weeks ago about how ‘all women are goddesses, how can you even consider men’ or something equally as embarrassing after a long late-night chat with a few too many beers. Kate threw up her arms and walked calmly and not at all stalked to the kitchen to escape the conversation.

She went to the back patio and flopped into one of the sun chairs. Day of rest, right? She nearly laughed at the thought. Did anyone who wore a bat symbol even know the meaning of that word?

It was cloudy, but the sun poked out enough to be seen. She closed her eyes and felt the weak sunlight on her pale skin. Her thoughts wandered to Diana, to her smiling. Her hair tied up and inviting Kate to call her. The curve of her collarbone. The way she held herself…

Kate must have nodded off, because when she opened her eyes again, the sun was no longer in the center of the sky. She groggily got to her feet and opened the sliding glass door, to be met with he loud laughter of the two men she had left in the loft.

“What’s the joke?”

“You,” Luke said, not missing a beat.

Kate didn’t even try resisting the urge to toss a throw pillow at the man’s face.

“Oh! Luke figured out the code, but it doesn’t help much. Looks like a spell but it’s nothing I’ve ever seen before,” Duke explained. “I mean, we figured it was a spell, but the code is like, I don’t even know how to describe it to you.”

“Again, not ancient, know how computers work.”

“Not like this, Kate _I_ barely even understand this code.” Luke folded his arms and frowned. His shoulders were stiff, like he was stressed that he couldn’t be more help.

Kate walked over to the screen and looked at the…translation? Decryption? It looked like a mix of the two but looking at it made Kate’s head swim.

“This is over our heads, isn’t it?”

Duke shrugged, “Probably, but when has that stopped us before?”

 

-

 

Kate was trying to tidy her apartment, as Julia was due back tomorrow, depending on whether or not she had chosen her favorite lay-over or not. It’s not that it was messy, per-se, it’s just Julia worried if there weren’t a few bowls in the sink indicating that Kate has at least tried to cook in her absence.

She snorted to herself at the fact that what she was doing was in fact, the opposite of tidying up.

Her mind was still on the code that they had found at the warehouse. Luke had uploaded it to the, ugh even thinking it was tedious, to the Bat-Cloud. Duke thought he was funny, but it had just amused her that he was so much like Dick. She had spent a few minutes earlier looking it over, trying to figure out how far along the spell had been.

Spell work was not her specialty. She had given up after only a few minutes.

Duke had told her that the teens were doing better; the girl she had accidentally sliced had gotten a few stitches but none of them seemed to remember how they got to the warehouse. So more magic then. She suggested to Duke that she could take over the main case of the internet demon, both to help lighten the poor kid’s work load and also because she was kicking herself for not getting the name of the demon Diana and Bruce had helped her with.

He had agreed, reluctantly, but she did remind him that his AP History project was due soon.

She was bagging the evidence of take-away boxes like it was a crime scene when there was a knock on the door. She went over and peeked through the eye-hole, a hand on a knife. Just in case.

“Sorry for the intrusion, I asked Alfred for your address when you weren’t at the manor.”

Standing there was Diana, her hair down today, wearing a sensible blue top. Kate blinked to give herself a moment to reflect on her surprise and then undid the many locks and latches on her door.

“Is everything okay?” Kate was running possibilities through her mind, why was Wonder Woman at her door?

Diana walked over to the kitchen counter and seemed to take in the apartment. Kate was feeling scrutinized and Luke’s words from earlier rang in her mind. She swatted them away. Her apartment was utilitarian, despite the ‘homey’ touches Julia had attempted to introduce. It was practical.

“Everything is fine, but Bruce happened to mention that there was another demon encounter the other day. I offered to help, since magic isn’t technically a strong suit of the Bats, Lazarus pits not with-standing.”

Kate snorted at the joke. “Bruce agreed to have you running around Gotham?”

“Surprising, I know, but I promised I’d keep a low-profile. And that I wouldn’t tell Clark.” Diana winked and Kate felt her knees wobble. “So, get me up to speed.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! See you next week!


End file.
